


the mayor and his husband

by bitterbeets (ginnydear)



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Innuendo, M/M, Political Campaigns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22156780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ginnydear/pseuds/bitterbeets
Summary: there's never a dull moment on the Favreau for Governor campaign.
Relationships: Jon Favreau/Jon Lovett
Comments: 18
Kudos: 53





	the mayor and his husband

**Author's Note:**

> hello, it's me again. this fic started when Shell shared [this post](https://romansroys.tumblr.com/post/177288030100/so-nice-to-see-a-candidates-supportive-husband-at) in the discord and the chat spiraled into some jonjon campaigning husbands. i opened a google doc, wrote "campaign husbandry" and didn't think about it for over a month. 
> 
> anyway, this is unbeta'd and has no real plot/order of events. it's just more soft boys being in love. from their friends point of view. 
> 
> as always, keep it secret. no one mentioned in this fic needs to read this.

_ **travis**. _

“Always knock on Jon’s office door.”

It’s one of the very first things he tells people when they sign on to work for the campaign. He tells them where to find the snack cabinet (“Literally eat anything, it’s kept well stocked for a reason.”), who to give their coffee order to (“Priyanka has the running list.”) and always, _ always, _ knock before entering Jon’s office. 

The newbies always ask, want to hear the story. Travis has been working with Jon for a long time and has seen the public's fascination with the mayor and his husband first hand. So when they ask, he always shakes his head. 

“Take my word for it.”

It’s not like Jon’s door is always closed. Jon’s far too social to keep his door closed. He likes to talk to people as they walk by, likes to know who’s working for him. He’s the second person (after Alyssa) that people meet when they’re hired on. He regularly goes out canvassing with new people or joins them for lunch. 

But sometimes the door is closed, and if Travis isn’t in there with him on some important call, he knows what’s happening behind that door might not be entirely professional. 

Lovett’s in the office when Travis arrives on Tuesday, which is a change of pace. Lovett’s days start way after the sun rises, so Travis stops at Jon’s office door and stares for a moment. 

“What are you doing?” Travis says in lieu of any kind of greeting, but Lovett doesn’t mind. They’ve been friends long enough he barely blinks. 

“I’m going canvassing today,” Lovett says with a grin, capping the pen he’d been holding and placing it back in its holder. 

“Oh, cool. There’s some new people going, so whip them into shape.” Travis pauses, shakes his head. “But nicely.”

“Travis, I am always nice.”

Someone down the hall snorts. 

Jon comes in a little later, Leo chasing ahead of him towards his sister, Pundit. Travis expects them to take the dogs out with them, so he makes sure to get some dog cuddles before the van leaves at 9. 

Everyone’s starting to gather out front to leave when Travis realizes Jon’s door is closed. 

“Travis, we need to leave,” Priyanka says, tapping her wrist. He levels her with a glare, which she returns, so he turns on his heel and heads for the closed door. 

“Guys,” he calls, knocking loudly. Dan, in his office across the hall, laughs at him. Travis resists the urge to flip him off. There’s interns watching, and he’s their superior. He makes a mental note to get Dan back later. “Guys!”

“A moment, Travis!” Lovett calls in a sing-song voice. Travis pinches the bridge of his nose. It’s 8:55 a.m.

The door opens a moment later and Lovett stands there, ears a little pink, top button of his henley undone. Behind him, Jon is sitting with his feet up on his desk, a lofty smile on his face. 

“You two are ridiculous.”

“Why, thank you,” Lovett says, wiping his mouth as he pushes around Travis. Jon chuckles at Travis’ face. 

“You act like you caught us balls deep,” Jon mumbles. Dan cackles across the hall. Travis flips him off. 

_ **alyssa**. _

She tells herself she’s crazy, agreeing to work on another campaign for Jon Favreau. But this time it’s for governor, and she believes in Jon. She’s known him for years, since she signed on to his mayoral campaign nearly ten years ago. His gap-toothed smile warmed her heart. 

It’s his husband that causes her stress. 

Alyssa firmly believes that Lovett is the only person on earth more committed to Jon’s political career than she is. Sometimes Dan tries to argue with her, mostly for fun, that he in fact cares the most, but Lovett firmly shoots them down. 

“The faster you both accept that I’m Jon’s number one fan, the easier it’ll be!” Lovett always says, cackling like it’s some hilarious joke. 

Which is why it baffles Alyssa that, at least once a week, Lovett seems so set on sabotaging everything. 

Sometimes it’s a tweet, sent out at 2 a.m. after she knows they’ve gone out drinking with friends. She furiously texts Jon until he responds and gets into Lovett’s phone to take it down. Then she sits back and prays for sunrise. 

Other times it’s someone catching Lovett on an off day, when he’s feeling a bit prickly and abrasive. Lovett’s very good at keeping his cool in public, but sometimes he rubs people the wrong way, and while Alyssa never wants Lovett to stop being himself, she doesn’t like it when he goes off on reporters who are simply doing their job. Thankfully, he’s gotten better at walking away over the years. 

Today, though, she’s going to find a way to murder him and get away with it. 

Jon’s out canvassing, which means they’re all out canvassing, and Alyssa had sent out a very specific memo to the staff to keep an eye on the happily married couple, to not let them wander off together. 

“If I see a single picture of Jon looking flushed and Lovett looking smug, someone is getting **fired**.”

She’s caught up in talking to a lovely old couple who voted for Jon for mayor and will definitely vote for him for governor when her phone starts buzzing wildly in her hand. Erin, who’s standing behind her, curses under her breath and takes off like a shot. 

“Oh, do you need to go?” the old woman asks, and when Alyssa looks at her texts, she nods. 

“Yes, I’m so sorry,” she apologizes, handing them a bumper sticker and promising to come back for that cobbler recipe. Then she follows Erin, who’s already halfway down the street. 

They find Jon and Lovett a street over, talking to a small crowd of people on someone’s front lawn. Lovett’s crouched down in the grass, petting the belly of a rather large dog as Jon talks. As Alyssa gets closer, she can see the way his hair isn’t sitting flat and the messiness of his shirt. Lovett’s eyes are a little hazy when he looks up at her. 

“Are you _ kidding _me?” Alyssa hisses at Lovett, crouching down and petting the dog to keep the constituents from hearing. Lovett shrugs, looking sheepish. 

“You can’t get mad at me, I didn’t start it.”

“You certainly didn’t stop it!”

“That,” Lovett points at her, “is true, I did not even try.”

Alyssa sighs as she stands up and walks over to their team photographer. Annie lowers her camera as Alyssa sighs. Jon’s lips look exceptionally pink. 

“Don’t even bother, we won’t use any of these,” she mumbles, and Annie shrugs. 

“I swear, I turned my back for a second and they disappeared,” Annie says softly, and Alyssa pats her arm. 

“You’re fine. They’d escape the watchful eye of a secret service agent with little difficulty.”

Annie coughs to cover up her laugh. 

** _priyanka. _ **

There’s a long-standing staff meeting every Friday at 10 a.m. A very mandatory, “you’re only way out is a hand-written note from Alyssa or Dan” kind of meeting. Tommy picks up bagels for everyone and they all pile into the biggest conference room, which is now not big enough to fit the whole team. 

They shuffle in, squeezing into as many chairs as the room allows and everyone else standing. Priyanka grabs a chair next to Elijah, who’s holding his camera and adjusting values. Sitting next to Elijah means she won’t have to talk much, which is always her meeting plan. 

When they’re all settled, Priyanka sees that Alyssa is having some kind of glaring contest with Lovett, and Priyanka surpresses a laugh when she realizes why. Lovett’s given his chair to someone else, and is sitting comfortably in Jon’s lap, leaning back so his head is on Jon’s shoulder. It’s not like everyone hasn’t seen them sitting in a similar position once or twice while walking past Jon’s office. 

Tayna starts the meeting with numbers, which is exactly Lovett’s thing. Officially, he has no real position on the campaign. He’s the doting husband that’s sponsored a thriving LGBTQ after school program. Unofficially, he spends hours with Tanya talking numbers, looking over polls, and running statistics. 

Dan and the communication team go next, which is Priyanka’s gig. She hands over the paperwork Dan asks for, holds up the new graphic options they’ve been working on, letting Elijah take a video of the options. 

“Veto the pink one,” Lovett says, but Jon shakes his head. He pinches Lovett’s side, making him squirm. Across the room, Alyssa puts her head in her hand. 

“You don’t have veto power,” Jon reminds Lovett, and Priyanka sees Jon pinch Lovett’s side again. Lovett’s face remains blank, but there’s color on his cheeks. 

“These are just mock-ups that we’ve been playing with. The colors aren’t set in stone,” Dan says, moving along with his speech. 

Finally, it’s Alyssa’s turn, and she has all of the information on canvassing. That’s Jon’s favorite topic, loves to talk to people out canvassing for him about how many doors he’s knocked on and the people he’s met through it. 

“I think we can set up sometime next week for you to get out there,” Alyssa promises Jon, who smiles happily. 

“You know I love a good canvas,” Jon jokes, earning a few snorts. Lovett rolls his eyes. 

“You’re a good canvas,” he mumbles, squirming again. Jon wraps an arm around Lovett’s waist and holds him. 

“You can do better than that,” Travis eggs him on, moving away from Alyssa as she reaches to pinch him. 

“You’re right,” Lovett grins. He looks up at Jon. “I’d like to canvass you.”

“Meeting’s over, I’ll send you all the notes,” Alyssa calls, and Priyanka and Elijah giggle as the room starts to clear. Over the noise, Priyanka can just barely hear Alyssa grumbling about the election being a month away.

“I thought it was pretty good,” Priyanka jokes. Lovett catches her eye and winks. 

** _dan. _ **

Dan joins Lovett a lot on his outreach work, following Lovett around parks, schools, shelters, soup kitchens. He’s as much there to represent Jon and the campaign as he is to support Lovett. Lovett had expressed early on in Jon’s political career that he didn’t want to sit idly by. He was as invested in politics as Jon was. It’s how they’d met, a story Dan could probably recite on the spot if asked. 

Lovett had come to Dan early with his plan, laying out timelines and implementation and how involved he wanted to be. Dan didn’t have the heart to tell Lovett that Dan was going to say yes no matter what he brought to the table.

So on Wednesdays, Dan, Lovett, and whichever social media intern is free pile into Dan’s car and head to one of the area’s schools that has created an after school LGBTQ outreach program. There’s an official name, but a lot of the kids have taken to calling themselves “friends of Jon.”

In the beginning, Lovett was always a little unsure of himself. He would be a ball of nervous energy until someone cracked a joke, or he found a kid to talk to for awhile. Teenagers flocked to Lovett, which didn’t surprise Dan at all. Lovett engaged the kids, talked to them like they were equals in a way Dan sometimes struggled with. As time passed, Lovett settled into his role and every time they left a school, he’d be beaming with pride. 

But sometimes, he leaves quieter than when they arrived, more subdued. He doesn’t talk much on the drive back to the office. Those times, Dan will watch Lovett walk right into Jon’s office, Pundit and Leo at his feet. He’s never purposely followed, but one time Lovett left his phone in the car, so instead of sending the intern, Dan had followed him to Jon’s office. 

The door was open, which was a good sign, but when Dan turned the corner, he felt his heart drop at the sight of Lovett’s blotchy cheeks. Jon had him cuddled up on the couch, long arms wrapped tightly around his husband as Lovett cried quietly, eyes closed. When Jon looked up, his face was tight. 

“Lovett forgot his phone,” Dan whispered, placing the phone on the desk. Jon nodded but didn’t make a sound, continuing to rub Lovett’s back. “Is he?”

“He’s okay,” Jon replied to Dan’s cut off question. Lovett’s lips twisted into a sad smile as he opened his eyes, looking at Dan. 

“Sometimes,” he takes a deep breath, resting his cheek against Jon’s shoulder. “Sometimes, it’s hard not to see my younger self in one of the kids. And you can only hope your words and promises that it’ll get better are enough.”

Dan nods, his throat tight as Lovett takes another deep breath. 

“Your words mean a lot. I see their impact every Wednesday,” Dan says sincerely. Lovett’s bottom lip trembles and Jon holds him a bit tighter. 

“Thank you, Dan,” Lovett says with a tight voice, turning his head again to hide in Jon’s shirt. Jon mouths a silent ‘thank you’ and Dan takes the dismissal, closing the office door behind him as he goes. 

** _erin. _ **

Leo trots into the breakroom, a sure sign that within the next five seconds, Jon’s going to walk in as well. Erin smiles at the dog, reaching down to pet his fur as she waits for Jon to talk around the corner. When he does, he’s already smiling. 

When she’d started, she hadn’t known that Jon took his lunch around 1 p.m. She’d wanted to skip sitting with everyone else, as she likes to read on her lunches. So when she’d walked in at 1:15 and seen Jon sitting alone at a table, she’d almost stopped short. 

“No, please, sit. Don’t mind me and the dog,” he’d joked, making her laugh. 

Now they have a comfortable routine, something she looks forward every day. Leo sits at her feet and begs, she gets through a solid chapter of her book, and she finds out what kind of post-it note Lovett put in Jon’s lunchbox. 

The first one had been an accident. Jon had placed the note on the table, chuckling softly to himself, and Erin had looked over at him questiongly. He’d shook his head, but then held up the post-it note anyway. There, in Lovett’s messy scrawl, had been a pun. 

“If a child refuses to sleep during nap time, are they guilty of resisting a rest?”

“Ha ha,” Erin had laughed as Jon nodded. 

“I know. They’re usually not this terrible.”

“Usually?”

And that’s how she’d found out about Lovett’s routine of cleaning out Jon’s reusable lunch-pail every night and putting a new post-it note in it every day. 

Jon’s quiet as he heads for the microwave, head bopping along to an unheard melody. Leo rests his head against Erin’s leg and starts his midday routine of looking up at her like he knows all of her deepest secrets. 

“Hey buddy,” she says, ruffling his fur a bit before looking away from him. He huffs a little but doesn’t bark, something she finds endearing. 

Jon sits down at the table across from Erin with a soft sigh, and when she looks over at him, he’s smiling at his food. He reaches into his bag and smiles wider when he pulls out a bright pink post-it, wrapped around his fork. 

“Ahh,” he says to himself, unwrapping the fork slowly. Erin looks away.

She’s turning the page when she realizes Jon’s been quiet for awhile and Leo’s left her. Putting her phone in her open book to hold her place, she looks over to see that Jon’s sitting back in his chair, post-it note held in his hand resting on the table. His eyes look misty. 

“Everything okay?” she asks softly, feeling a bit guilty when he jumps. 

“Oh, yeah, all good.” He chuckles, shaking the piece of paper. He takes a deep breath. “Sometimes, Lovett’s surprisingly sentimental.”

“Oh really?” she says sarcastically, raising an eyebrow. She’s heard Lovett give a couple motivational speeches on the fly over the years. She’s been on the receiving end of his sentimentality. Jon laughs. 

“Sometimes.” He thumbs the paper, his eyes crinkling. He places the note down on the table and picks up his phone, tapping away. He’s quiet the rest of lunch. 

Later, when Erin drops something off in Jon’s office, she smiles at the bright pink post-it stuck to the frame of Jon and Lovett’s wedding picture on the shelf behind Jon’s desk. The writing’s hard to make out, but it looks like Lovett’s filled the entire page with tiny “I love you’s” and a couple crudely drawn penises. 

“Oh, thanks, Erin,” Jon says as she drops the papers on his desk. She grins at him. 

“You’re welcome. Oh, and happy anniversary!”

** _tommy. _ **

It’s a joke amongst the campaign staff that Tommy is Jon’s other husband. When Lovett got wind of it, he had laughed and ran with it, making it one of the campaigns inside jokes. Someone had accidentally said it near a reporter at one point, and Alyssa almost had an aneurysm. Really, it’s that Tommy was part of Jon’s life before politics, and when he tells people he’s seen Jon at all of his highs and lows, he means it. Only Tommy knows about the Taco Bell incident of 2001, and it’s going to stay that way, no matter how much Lovett bugs him. 

Election nights, before the results come out, are some of Jon’s “lows.”

Lovett takes his phone away, handing it off to someone in social media to tweet and keep up with mentions. Alyssa sits him down before they open up headquarters to the public and gives him a long, warm pep-talk that ends with her reminding him the local news is coming. Tommy and Lovett sit with him after Alyssa is done and try to lighten the mood by telling jokes. Sometimes, it works. 

Arguably, running for governor is the scariest thing Jon’s done thus far in life, and that includes proposing (which Tommy was there for, so he feels safe to say this is worse). He’s running against a Republican with a lot of backing, a lot of money. Jon might be the mayor of one of the biggest cities in the state, but California’s pretty big. 

Halfway through the night, Tommy loses sight of Jon. He doesn’t panic at first, because the crowd is growing and Jon might just be sitting down somewhere. Plus, he can still see Lovett entertaining a group of college kids, so Jon can’t be too far. 

But soon he loses sight of Lovett too, and that’s when Alyssa catches his eyes across the room and he heads upstairs. The intern on the stairs smiles as they let Tommy pass. 

The hallways are quieter up here, the party downstairs a dull hum through the floor. Tommy can see the light on in Jon’s office, which at least means the door is open. He makes sure to make some noise with his shoes and keys as he walks to the door. 

Lovett’s sitting on one end of the couch, his phone in his left hand. His other hand is gently massaging the top of Jon’s head, which is pillowed in Lovett’s lap. He’s stretched out along the couch, his feet up on the opposite arm. Neither of them move when Tommy walks in and pulls a chair over to sit next to them. 

“Alyssa send you?” Lovett asks quietly, setting his phone down. He takes the opportunity to use two hands and puts the pads of his thumbs against Jon’s temples. Jon lets out a soft groan. 

“If you mean glared at me from across the room, yes,” Tommy answers, earning a chuckle. Lovett shakes his head. 

“She’s scarier than my mother.”

“Fran is the least scary person I know,” Jon mumbles, cracking an eye open to look at Lovett. 

“She can’t hear you,” Lovett jokes, smiling when Jon reaches up and pinches his waist. 

“She’s still the least scary person we know,” Tommy says, leaning away from Lovett as he makes a pinching motion with his fingers. “Polls are closing soon, so we need to get back downstairs.”

“How long do I have?” Jon asks, grabbing Tommy’s arm to look at his watch. 

“Like five minutes before you really need to be down there,” Lovett answers for him, Jon sighing heavily. 

“Come on, this is the fun part! The part where we win!” Tommy says, trying to walk a fine line between excited and slightly manic. Jon sits up slowly, cracking his neck. Lovett slides across the couch and back into his space. 

“You’ve got this, darling. I just know it.”

Jon looks at Lovett, his entire face melting into the very definition of soft, and Tommy stands up from his chair and puts it back in it’s spot. He gives them a moment, knowing it’s not every day that Lovett lets himself be soft in front of people. 

He turns around when Jon clears his throat, and he’s pleased to see that they both look excited again. Jon might look a little anxious underneath it all, but Tommy will take it. 

Later, when the preliminary results come in, showing Jon Favreau with a definite lead over his opponent, Tommy winks at Jon before Jon dips Lovett behind Tommy’s back and kisses him where the cameras can’t see. 

Pulling that off will definitely be one of Jon's "highs."

**Author's Note:**

> you are fully welcome to make up any sort of sexual acts you can think of to fit the moments for this fic, i didn't have anything particular in mind. make it as dirty or clean as you want. 
> 
> as always, comments are always appreciated! come say hi to me on tumblr, i'm theotherapps!


End file.
